Woman of Yesterday and To-day.
Malkiel, Theresa Serber. Woman of Yesterday and To-day. New York: The Co-Operative Press, n.d.
12mo.; grey printed wrappers; pages faintly darkened; else as new.
First, and only, edition of a fragile 16-page pamphlet. Though undated, the revolutionary feminist-anarchist text indicates that it dates from the early part of this century; certainly it was printed before 1918, when the anti-anarchist purges effectively muted anarchist voices.
Theresa Serber Malkiel (1874-1949) was an editor, writer, and women’s rights activist. Born in Russia, Malkiel emigrated with her family to the U.S. in 1891. She began her political activities as a member of the Russian Workingman’s Club, and upon arrival in New York City she became a union organizer (first president of the National Woman’s Infant Cloak Maker’s Union, 1892), a delegate to the Knights of Labor and to the first convention of the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, and organizer of the Women’s Progressive Society of Yonkers, 1907. Malkiel was the editor of an ongoing women’s column in the Jewish Daily News and a prolific writer of articles in Socialist Women and other such journals. Her riveting fictionalized account, The Diary of a Shirtwaist Striker (1910), tells the story of a young sewing-machine operator’s politicization.
In Woman of Yesterday and To-day, Malkiel argues the necessity of combining socialist and feminist goals: women entering the workplace, Malkiel contends, must seek equal rights for their gender as well as for their class. In part:
YOU, who have come to womanhood during the second decade, have advanced still more. The experience gained by your grandmother and mother came you in good stead, moulded YOU into an independent being possessing all the faculties essential to the human race...YOU dare not close your eyes to the serious questions of life, pass your days as if in a trance. You are doing an injustice to your intellect by this inactivity. Whether you recognize it or not, YOU want to be independent, YOU are longing for a purse of your own. YOU insist upon having your say in matters which concern your future welfare. Neither father nor husband can make you bow to their will. YOUR future is before you, for you to make or mar. The world can be yours if YOU make an effort to make it worth having. YOU, the woman of to-day, are the bulwark of our National strength; it is within your power to become the equal and comrade of man. “She who would be free must herself strike the first blow.” (pp. 14-16)
(#4738)
Print Inquire